Belitung Trip

Belitung is an island located on the east coast of Sumatra, Indonesia in the Java Sea. this island become popular in Indonesia after a movied called Laskar Pelangi which showed the beauty of the island.
It is well known for it's Pepper & tin. and the beaches are well known also for the big rocks. 

This is my first trip to the island and I have few questions prior to the travel:

1. Which hotel I should stay?
2. how long should I stay?
3. What are the must- visit places?
4. should I go by my own? or tour guide?

Hotel & Flight

I visited the island back in April. I did my flight ticket & hotel booking directly from a portal company. There are many flight schedule to this island from jakarta, those includes Garuda, Citilink, Lion, Sriwijaya airline.

After doing some preliminiary research I decided to book a hotel called Hotel Icon. nice hotel with reasonable price (arround IDR 450,000). it;s a new hotel. and located at Tanjung Pandan, the staffs are very helpful as well. and not far if you want to go anywhere from there.

Transportation

My other decision was to rent a car without driver & without Fuel. (I used Innova and it costs me IDR 400,000/day). and i think this is right decision since i think the mark on the roads are great, you can go anywhere just following those road marks.  you can also depends on your GPS (i use Telkomsel here and quite okay to explore the island).

One thing that you need to be aware if you travel there and you are driving is that.. it's quite difficult to find a gas station (SPBU). there are plenty of gasoline being sold by the villagers at their warung (small Shop), the price is a bit more expensive, but still reasonable i think.

Exploration

my 1st day on this island was spent on a beach called Tanjung Tinggi beach, i think this is the best beach in Belitung island with big rocks, and this is the beach where Laskar Pelangi movie was made. 

we spent the whole afternoon at this beach, it's a beautiful beach. 

Day 2 we travel to islands, we did boat booking through hotel and I think this is the most convenient way to do so. it's arround IDR 500,000 for renting the boat for 1 day ( i heard normally from 9 Am- 2 PM) and you can explore up to 5 islands. 

I think going to islands are the best part of our exploration, as those islands are very beautiful, it took a few minutes only from 1 island to another. here are some great pictures.

Food

There are a lot of recommended food in Belitung you must try- they are great food close to the hotel, you may ask hotel staffs on the recommended places to buy, those food includes:

- Ya mien

- Kwetiau

- Martabak 

If u plan to buy snack I think the best place to find it is in a family store called "Toko oleh-oleh Keluarga"